And when these masters count up the spoils that their hounds have thus brought home to them, they set up a corresponding shout that "the public prosperity," "the common interest," and "the general welfare" have been "advanced." And the scoundrels by whom the work has been accomplished, "in the halls of national legislation," are trumpeted to the world as "great statesmen." And you are just stupid enough to be deceived into the belief, or just knave enough to pretend to be deceived into the belief, that all this is really the truth.
One would infer from your address that you think the people of this country incapable of doing anything for themselves, _individually_; that they would all perish, but for the employment given them by that "large variety of diverse and competing interests"--that is, such purely selfish schemes--as may be "persistently seeking recognition of their claims ... in the halls of national legislation," and secure for themselves such monopolies and advantages as congress may see fit to grant them.
Instead of your recognizing the right of each and every individual to judge of, and provide for, his own well-being, according to the dictates of his own judgment, and by the free exercise of his own powers of body and mind,--so long as he infringes the equal rights of no other person,--you assume that fifty millions of people, who never saw you, and never will see you, who know almost nothing about you, and care very little about you, are all so weak, ignorant, and degraded as to be humbly and beseechingly looking to you--and to a few more lawmakers (so called) whom they never saw, and never will see, and of whom they know almost nothing--to enlighten, direct, and "_control_" them in their daily labors to supply their own wants, and promote their own happiness!
You thus assume that these fifty millions of people are so debased, mentally and morally, that they look upon you and your associate lawmakers as their earthly gods, holding their destinies in your hands, and anxiously studying their welfare; instead of looking upon you--as most of you certainly ought to be looked upon--as a mere cabal of ignorant, selfish, ambitious, rapacious, and unprincipled men, who know very little, and care to know very little, except how you can get fame, and power, and money, by trampling upon other men's rights, and robbing them of the fruits of their labor.